Date of airing: October 15, 1995 (FOX)
Nielsen ratings information: 9.9 million viewers, 7.3/12 in Households
written by: Stephen Zito
directed by: Stephen Cragg
This was an interesting episode that made clear what kind of show SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND wanted to be: a sci-fi spectacle that has no problem sticking its stories into a wholly different genre for an hour to celebrate the existence of genres, and to make sure that not every episode about this alien-hunting military space fiction drama is about hunting hostile aliens.
I do not have any knowledge of
submarine thrillers, but this episode felt like it was the sci-fi TV
version of the German multi-hour classic DAS BOOT (which has been released and re-released in miniseries form, and even got a sequel in the form of a miniseries). The MacArthur cargo vessel very much looked like a submarine in
peril, and with contact with any other ship lost, dancing between two
unstable stars, and a hunter-killer in the midst out to destroy the
cargo ship, this was very much a submarine thriller, only it happened to be set in a world where humankind is raging war against a hostile alien race. As it
seems, you could have done a lot with SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND, because
not only was it a science-fiction military action show, but it was also
able to imitate other genres for an episode. It is probably the cheapest and easiest way to get a potentially expensive sci-fi show on the air, because the writers would not feel forced to come up with absurd twists and turns that would eventually pop the budget balloon. Take over other genres, and you may keep the budget low.
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| Somewhere in here is your family. |
Three episodes have taken place before this one, and all three took one of the three central characters (which I consider to be Cooper, Nathan, and Shane) and put them into the character arc that made its way through their respective episodes, together with an emotional arc. Now that has been done, I am almost certain the show was continuing with whatever storytelling the writers came up with, because the three episodes following the pilot movie felt like individual character arc pilots for the three main heroes of the story, and I never thought this could be done. Okay, the second season of THIRD WATCH did that, but the series was already established back then, although the writers apparently tried to figure out what the show was in its second season, and if it could have been more than just a paramedic cop procedural featuring firefighters and personal troubles.
In the case of SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND, the writers
just wanted to bring the three main heroes a little closer to the
viewers, and for me, it worked splendidly. Seeing Cooper getting his
head around his heritage, as well as not being considered a human by
everyone who does not know him almost hurt me as well as it hurt him.
Cooper just wanted to have a past, a family, maybe even some friends
that could understand his pain or he can shoot the breeze with, but here he was, in the middle of an
accidental suicide mission, realizing that his fellow humans still see
in "Tanks" what their ancestors saw in black people: They are not worth anything. In a way, this episode was not just a Cooper-centric character
arc, in addition to being a submarine thriller, it also took on the effort to
politicize the storyline by taking examples from real-life social
issues that plague American history. I guess science-fiction dramas were made to depict social
issues, and SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND was not unlike other science-fiction
dramas. Here is to hoping that the show was able to do these kinds of episodes a lot more throughout its short run.
The submarine thriller part gave me a few thrills here and there,
though the writers helped themselves a little bit by establishing the
threat to be real and evil, and not just as part of dancing between
two ustable stars. For the first half, McQueen and Nathan were arguing about whether there
was a threat out there or if the problems were caused by solar flares,
but as soon as McQueen forced the specs for the U-378 (oh hey, another
example of why this was a submarine thriller) out of Nathan, the threat
was established, McQueen was right with his suspicions, and everyone was following his orders again. Which is a bit of a shame because I would have loved for the solar flares to be a real issue here – after all, I am more a fan of hard science-fiction, and if the solar flares had been a bigger issue than just the characters arguing about accepting the loss of an entire colony of Tanks to cool down the reactors, then I would have been thoroughly entertained.
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| They just want what is best for you. |
The mutiny was not that interesting, however. I would have appreciated if it was an actual coup d’etat, and Keats was trying to grab power in a political sense, instead of coming out blazing. When his right-hand man actually killed Captain Lewelyn and Potter, I was rolling my eyes just a little, because it not only destroyed the titular premise of the episode, but it proved that it was just a plot device to create tension between Cooper and McQueen – tension that was essentially not needed any longer after the double murder happened.
The only question that
was asked after that twist was whether Cooper would shut down the In
Vitro cargo and essentially kill the only family he knew he had. If this would have been a coup d’etat, it might have ruined the
submarine thriller storyline, because, all of a sudden, this episode would
have had to deal with two different storylines, and it would have been too clustered with material that would have removed the science-fiction aspect a bit.
